Hey there !
As the “beginner” server, I feel like having no hour requirement for antagonist can lead to several problems :
New players not knowing what to do at all. We learn with trial and error but most of the time this leads to no trial at all considering they do not have experience with the game at all, so they learn nothing.
Ban evaders using this to be more of an ass than usual.
I think new players should learn the game quite a bit before attempting traitor let alone nukies or wizard, otherwise it leads to boring stuff for all parties involved.
As a beginner myself I can tell that the first time I was chosen as an antagonist I did absolutely nothing because I was so overwhelmed and didn’t know the game well enough.
The second time around it was one of the best experiences I had.
Today was the third time, and I got to live out my fantasy of injecting myself with a deadly virus and negotiating the death of 2 people.
Although I failed miserably those were fun.
I must be playing for 3 weeks now.
First week should be antag free in my experience. And I only know the basic like traitor blood brother, cultist and those things.
Other than that people have been helpful when I told them I wasn’t very experienced at being a baddy haha.
Cheers! I support this!
PS: Althought I should add that if people want to grief antag lock wont really do anything because they will grief regardless haha
Unless they are a team antag the only people they’re going to hurt by being incompetent are themselves. So I don’t really see the reason in hour requirements for those.
Antags have an obligation to make the round more interesting in general. I’m not saying a new player couldn’t do that but they should at least get the basics down on the gameplay before being allowed. Doesn’t have to be a big hour requirement but ya know having competent antags is always good and increases the chance of something cool happening. The reason for the small hour requirement is that you really learn antag from trial and error and wiki reading so you don’t want to block them out too much while still giving them time to learn the game in general.
It was always funny when someone accidentally rolled antag and adminhelped saying that they don’t know how to play antag and want to give it away despite having hundreds of hours
I’m not sure if increasing hour requirements for antags helps, you have to force yourself to learn by doing, and most people are afraid of failure
While I agree with you that people with hundreds of hours should jump in the “trial and error” wagon, the post is more about new/newish people that don’t know/understand core game mechanics.
Lots of times it really isn’t about being scared of what they need to do, but a deep lack of understanding of the game that is yet to be here.
@PinkSuzuki said it best in their answer, and even then they admit to have only touched basic antagonists.
Having quite a bit of hours requirement for antagonist (and even more for wizards and nuclear agents) would both help the server having less silent antags rounds and less discouraged new players being swarmed with unecessary informations for their level.